Why, instead of safely entering a BIOS setup, does the cell phone brick when installing the Custom ROM wrongly? Wouldn’t this protection be better for users? I mean, this could be done through ADB.
Also, do you think it’s possible that this way of doing things will come to the computer, with ARM hoping to gain a good share of the market and all?
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Phones don’t brick with installing a ROM wrong just the same PCs don’t brick when you fail to install an OS correctly on it. It just doesn’t have a bootable OS on it.
Most phones have a download mode / fastboot which does exactly what you’re asking for. You can pretty much always reflash a valid OS with fastboot.
BIOS on PCs is used for compatibility because most hardware manufacturers want to be compatible with existing operating systems. ARM does support UEFI.
Phones just don’t have UEFI, because 99.999% of the time it will run only one operating system: the manufacturer’s flavor of Android. Skipping an UEFI makes it boot faster because it can load directly into the Linux kernel which will initialize the hardware and already knows the precise hardware it’s expecting to be present through its device tree. Chromebooks do that on x86 as well: they skip the firmware part and boot into Linux as early as possible, because it boots faster and it’s a ton of code you don’t need when you can just let Linux deal with it. Both are purpose built to run Linux, there’s no point wasting time with a whole firmware interface nobody should ever need. Fastboot is a perfectly fine low-level bootloader interface that lets you flash ROMs just fine.
Phones just don’t have UEFI, because 99.999% of the time it will run only one operating system: the manufacturer’s flavor of Android.
And the manufacturers very much want to keep it that way.
They do not want you to be able to make those changes, and intentionallyput roadblocks in your way.
Unified Extensible Firmware Interface isn’t how we spell planned obsolescence and that doesn’t add up to infinite profit sooooo yeah.
Can’t have you replacing the OS on that thing. Adding security patches and a new battery on that. Just wouldn’t be fair to us billionaires and our R&D department. We have to justify all this labor somehow.
You can replace the OS on most Android devices.
Specifically- devices made by Google have been unlocked allowing replacement of the software.
You still have to put together a working kernel and drivers, environment, etc.
Not much stopping folks from doing that though.
GrapheneOS, Ubuntu, and others have made headway for some devices.
Each device potentially uses different hardware implementation and features.
Graphene is targeting only google pixel devices.
Ubuntu touch and Ubuntu phone have been picked up by I think postmarketOS
I think AOSP is the best bet for the largest majority of Android users.
Kernel dev is a fun hobby.
ACKSHUALLY
Most modern PCs don’t have a BIOS, either.
They have a UEFI, a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface.
*pushes glasses up nose.
Don’t bother giving me a wedgie, I can do it myself.
I think you just gave me a wedgie because I thought UEFI was the same… But reflecting, I don’t think I have had to use the BIOS since I used Windows 98…
Bios died out around 2010. It lasted a good long time. Your could argue a boot menu is bios and you’ve probably interacted with that at some point.
Also nobody stopped calling it a bios. Every motherboard I’ve owned with a UEFI has called it a “UEFI bios”.
I switched to a Linux OS in '08 and haven’t really paid attention since. I’ve done a little partition work but I’m no superuser… I probably have a UEFI and don’t know it. My days of using the bible are gone haha
That’s not a guarantee.
UEFI uses GUID Partition Tables (GPT) instead of a Master Boot Record (MBR) and needs an EFI partition.
I personally recall Linux in 08 had pretty abysmal UEFI/GPT support. I’d say support didn’t become as good until about 2015-2016ish.
So you very well may still be using traditional MBRs if you haven’t really changed your setup.
Especially since a lot of UEFIs come with a compatability layer to mimic BIOS and allow some backward compatability.
Late reply since I’ve been in the field - I no longer have to worry about partition space for kernels, that is nice. Using mobile rn but I will look when I get on my computer.
